Resources & support for working with BIG behaviors, regulation and sensory needs in the playroom and beyond.

Relating Through The Senses: A Play Therapy Consult Series

Join us for a 4-part series of case consultation and book discussion.

We’re deepening and expanding ways to invite kids' bodies and brains to fully engage in play and family therapy sessions.

Our book for the group is The Connected Therapist (2021) by Marti Smith, OTR/L—an occupational therapist, parent coach, and past ChildTrauma Academy fellow.

We start December 9th, second Mondays, Dec 2024-March 2025. We’ll meet virtually, four times, 90 minutes each, 12-1:30pm Pacific.

6 CE’s included. $375. Equity pricing offered for graduate students and QT-BIPOC clinicians. Enrollment ends Dec 3rd.

Meet Your Co-Facilitators

Play is essential. Flying solo isn't. Let's deepen our work together!

  • Community

    Working as a play therapist is fun, challenging, and super-creative. Tapping into your best work as a clinician means following your own inner compass.

    The deeper we follow our curiosity and learning in this field, the more essential it becomes to follow where our own paths toward play and joy take us.

    Case consultation is an opportunity to explore what sustains and challenges you in this work—alongside colleagues who will go there with you!

  • Sensory-Somatic Approach + 6 CE's

    Our framework for this case consultation series comes from the wonderfully accessible book The Connected Therapist: Relating Through the Senses, by Marti Smith, OTR/L, an award-winning occupational therapist, Trust-Based Relational Intervention practitioner, and ChildTrauma Academy fellow.

    We'll pace the reading so you have time to practice and apply the ideas to your own work in the playroom. Bring your questions about ways to incorporate these ideas with specific clients.

    6 CE's approved by NASW; LPC and LMFT content areas included. We'll include systems thinking, clinical decision-making, and attachment themes.

    Must attend all 4 sessions to receive CE's.

  • Expand Your Toolbox

    ⭐️ Access ALL 8 senses, linking internal sensations with emotions, building on the classic five senses—engaging them all to support regulation, ease transitions, and more!

    ⭐️ Deepen your conceptualization skills and embrace whole-brain treatment planning, designing effective, super-supportive, trauma-smart interventions tailored for your clients’ unique needs.

    ⭐️ Expand your capacity for attending to your own needs and setting effective limits, even in the midst of sessions, without exhaustion and burn-out.

Build Your Toolbox ✨

Build Your Toolbox ✨

We start December 9th, 2nd Mondays

December 2024 to March 2025. We’ll meet virtually, 90 minutes, 12-1:30pm Pacific. 6 CE’s included. $375 for the series.

Equity pricing HERE for current graduate students & QT-BIPOC clinicians.

What you can expect

  • Trauma Awareness

    Engaging the senses is essential to effective play therapy & trauma work.

    We're learning to ease difficult experiences by helping clients tune in to body and sensory cues. Your own reactions to complex client care needs are welcome in this group.

  • Brain-based Connection

    Helping clients make brain-body connections is empowering and regenerative!

    We'll explore the neuroscience of behavior through sensory-rich, attuned, co-regulation. We'll offer this support to you, too, so your nervous system is tended.

  • Flexible Invitations

    Knowing what to offer when is a play therapist superpower you can hone!

    Learn how non-verbal cues and creativity can help you tune-in to clients’ needs. We'll practice!

  • Simple Tools

    Working with just what you have is a strategy of insight and confidence.

    Discover how low-cost, simple materials from around the house and nature can engage clients effectively.

FAQs

  • We'll cover 60-ish pages per month.

    Our sessions will be a discussion and elaboration on each month's suggested reading. Rather than a teaching course, our vision includes interactive conversations, examples you can implement right away, and case consultation each session.

    Here's an overview of the chapters + topics:

    • Section I: Becoming Connected (Chapters 1-5)

      - Recognizing sensory preferences

      - Understanding dissociation as a protective response

      - Tracking critical windows of development

    • Section II: The Sensory Systems (Chapters 6-8)

      - Understanding sensory processing

      - How the “hidden senses” function

      - Leaning into a spectrum of activities for engaging all the body's senses

    • Section III: Practical Strategies and Supports (Chapter 9)

      - Supporting kids in the playroom, home and school with “sensory diets”—just-right activities for their nervous system state

      - An accessible sensory-savvy assessment tool to help you plan sessions and guide home-based play with low-cost, high-impact materials

      - Ways to involve parents, prepare your space, and plan sessions with all this in mind

      ⭐️ You’ll need to purchase your own copy of the book. ⭐️

      Yes! There's an audio version of this book, too!

  • Absolutely!

    In the playroom...

    • Access the senses as a portal to felt safety and decoding non-verbal cues

    • Tailoring regulation and relational supports for each client

    • Harness the superpower of non-verbal signaling

    In your clinical thinking + problem-solving...

    • Recognize developmental impacts of trauma

    • Teach kids about their brains and sensory preferences

    • Get curious about connections between BIG behaviors and nervous system health

    Building your resilience...

    • Limits that land without rewards/consequences, so you can stay present and grounded

    • Working with parents in the playroom, so you can collaborate and support them, too!

    • Using internal cues to anchor yourself in tense moments, so your capacity stays flexible

  • Learning Objectives for the series follow. No partial CE's available; please plan to attend all four sessions.

    1) Apply a neurodevelopmental, attachment framework for understanding behavior and conceptualizing the needs underlying client challenges.

    2) Learn trauma-responsive treatment planning for chronic dysregulation.

    3) Practice reframing off-track behaviors, emotional intensity, and other non-verbal coping patterns as attempts at regulation, seeking safety, and developing resilience. Effectively meet those needs with new tools.

    4) Experience a holistic approach toward increased resilience and effective brain-body-sensory strategies for stress coping and expanding capacity with less burnout.

    5) Adopt strength-based observation and reflection skills that highlight adaptation and reflect existing regulation tools, celebrating empowerment.

    6) Identify creative, cost-effective, sensory-smart interventions for child and adolescent clients in the playroom, portable to home and school

    7) Refine your awareness of cross-disciplinary referrals (OT, music therapy, ADHD coaching), how they can support treatment goals, and where in the treatment process to refer out, consult, or collaborate.


    6 CE’s have been awarded by NASW for this series, at no additional cost. For LPC's and LMFT's, you can be confident that the standards of the Board of Social Workers are generally regarded as more than sufficient for our training requirements and cover nearly the same content areas.

    You can access Continuing Education guidelines HERE, established by the Oregon Board of Licensed Professional Counselors & Therapists. You’ll receive a certificate of attendance following the conclusion of the series and after submitting an evaluation.

    MereAnn is an LPC, and Jamie is an LMFT; please follow up with us if you have questions.

  • We're excited about this series because it allows us to connect with colleagues across the region! In Summer 2024, we hosted an in-person outdoor play therapy training on related content. This is a deeper dive into those ideas!

    We hope to offer an in-person, outdoor training again when the weather warms up—let us know if you'd like to be on the waitlist!

  • 12noon-1:30pm Pacific Time, 2nd Mondays of each month on ZOOM: December 9, January 13, February 10, March 10. Commitment is for the FULL SERIES.